Re: Cosmos 398 = 71- 16 A
Kurt Jonckheere (kjonckheere@unicall.be)
Tue, 21 Nov 95 17:57:06 +0000 (GMT)
At 01:39 21-11-95 -0500, Josh R. Williams wrote:
>Anyone else out there in Seesat-L world seen Cosmos 398? It is Norad
>number #04966, and I must tell you it was really bright, I put it at Mag
>1 to 0.... I couldn't believe I was looking at it... SO I checked my
>charts and that was the only thing that was supposed to be there... :) I
>was truly amazed because I have it down on my list as being Mag. +2 on a
>good pass, so I must have gotten lucky....
In the PPAS-archive (Photometric Periods of Artificial Satellites) of
the Belgian Working Group Satellites I found about ten observations of
the past years. They all indicate a brightness of about mag +6.
According to my information this object is an old Soviet Moonlander.
So you must have observed a very favourable pass!
PS: You can find the PPAS-archive on the Web-pages.
Greetings,
Kurt Jonckheere (kjonckheere@unicall.be)